I was shivering slightly from lack of decent clothes as we stood outside of the car I had rented from the hotel and triple-checked the GPS equipment. I walked a half block away and said, “Testing one, two, three,” in a normal speaking voice before returning to Liam.
“Heard you loud and clear. That means that even though you can’t hear me I will be with you the entire time.” Logically I knew that meant he would just hear my screams if things went bad, but his words reassured me, made me feel a little less alone. The equipment was all set up. I was wearing one of the GPS trackers as a necklace while another one was stuffed in one of the cups of my bra. I really hoped that it didn’t come to the point where I would lose that one.
Everything was ready. Now I just had to gather the courage to walk into that club and look isolated and vulnerable enough to become a target. It would mean falling back into the person I become when I used to live in this city. Harper White was forced to do things like this all the time. She was well practiced at hiding her fear and disgust behind a mask of innocence. I would rely on those years of experience to get me through tonight. I took a deep breath, settled back into my Harper persona, and stepped away from the car when a large hand gently touched my arm.
“Please find her. Find my Grace,” Liam asked in a desperate plea.
“I will,” I promised in a quiet voice. “And I need you to be smart about coming in to get us. I have been thinking and wherever this leads us, you need to call the FBI in. You’re going to want to bust in and save her the second we get a location. But it will be safer for you and her if you wait and think things through with a tactical team. It is worth the extra time it will take to ensure that this goes down right.” I looked into his eyes to make sure he heard me before adding the next part. “If for some reason you lose us, have Jose tell you where the auction is and use plan B to buy us back.” Then I walked away from Liam while I still retained the courage to do so.
It was ten PM on a Monday night and I expected the club to be dead, but it wasn’t as bad as I would have guessed. The dance floor wasn’t packed but as I walked through the doors of Push, I saw that there was a good amount of people ringing around the bar and congregating around the small high tables. I looked over at the bartender and was disappointed to find that both were women. While it wasn’t impossible that a woman would work for a cartel, I didn’t see these women roofing girl’s drinks behind the bar. My chances of getting taken tonight just dropped.
I slowly approached the bar while surveying the gathered people and testing out if I got a kidnaper vibe off anyone. I decided to stand at the end of the bar where a dead lightbulb made the corner of the room a little darker than the rest of the room. When one of the bartenders finally noticed me standing there, I ordered a margarita and a shot of tequila. When the drink and shot were placed in front of me, I immediately downed the shot in one gulp and ordered one more. I was going to need some help acting like a helpless bimbo who would let herself get drugged at a bar, and figured tequila was a good place to start.
I knew I had agreed to this, hell it had been my idea but now that I was here, I was doubting my ability to pull this off. I had fought long and hard to make sure I never found myself helpless and at the mercy of violent men again. Every one of my hard-earned instincts were telling me to run. To just walk out of this club and this city that posed such a danger to me. I had never even met Grace Harris and didn’t owe Liam anything. Why the world was I allowing myself to be dragged back into the world I gave everything to escape from. I didn’t want to become Harper White again. I hated every day of my life as Harper. And it was not easy to slip back into her skin.
And then I remembered the photo of Grace with her Colombia sweatshirt on. The only reason why I had attended college was to educate myself on how to better hide dirty money and to learn how to hack into secure systems. Grace was in a pre-nursing program. Grace deserved the light while I knew I belonged in the dark. Maybe this was the reason behind my shiny new chance. This was how I could start to atone for all I had done, sacrifice myself in the hope they could pull Grace out of the dark before it took over her soul as it had mine.
However, there was a careful balancing act going on here, because we were in New York City. If my past caught up to us here then Liam would instantly have a target on his back because of our connection. I needed to save Grace without getting noticed or everything was going to end in rivers of blood.
I was so worked up with thoughts of self-sacrifice that when the first guy approached to buy me a drink I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Whoa, I didn’t mean to scare you, beautiful. I just wanted to buy you a drink.” I looked down at my untouched margarita and then glanced back up at the middle-aged white guy in outdated clothes. He noticed the full drink and stammered out more attempts at awful pickup lines. This guy was no kidnapper, he was just had an embarrassing pick-up game.
After the middle-aged guy, there was the juiced up on steroids guy who thought he was God’s gift to all womankind, and a male model type that had more product in his hair than I owned. They were all surprised when I firmly turned them down and sent them on their way. It would seem that Monday nights were when desperate women went out and the men saw them as sure-things. I had just finished my second margarita and was swaying slightly to the beat of the music when an arm reached around me and placed a full drink on the bar. Said arm was covered in low-quality tattoos that I identified as prison ink.
I slowly turned towards my new suitor and looked up into a hard-Hispanic face. He was wearing baggy blue jeans and a white wife-beater with an open black or dark blue button-up shirt. The low neckline of the wife-beater showcased a large black tattoo at the base of his neck that I knew symbolized his affiliation with the Los Zetas Cartel. My heart skipped a beat in fear as I forced my eyes to meet the man’s while giving him a small flirtatious smile. He leaned against the bar, effectively cutting off my view of the rest of the club and trapping me against the wall. He didn’t say anything to me in greeting. He just ran his eyes down the length of my body before pushing the drink towards me.
I had to repress a shiver of repulsion as I felt his gaze like filthy hands on my skin. He smelled strongly of cigarette smoke, body odor, and piss. It made me want to gag. He had been the only guy to bring a drink to me instead of just offering to buy me one, and I had no doubt that the drink was laced with a drug that would make me more compliant and vulnerable. This was it. This was what we had been hoping would happen. This disgusting excuse for a man would bring me to where the cartel was holding Grace. All I had to do was take the drink and hand over control.
My hard earned control.
I filled my mind with thoughts of Grace and Molly and Julie and Cara as I reached for the glass. I would do this for them and hope that it wasn’t the last thing I ever did. Raising the glass to my lips without betraying my emotional turmoil was one of the hardest things that I ever purposefully did.
I took a small sip, physically forced myself to swallow, and asked the man his name in a girly high-pitched voice. He smiled in victory as he watched my lips and then leaned in to tell me, “I have been watching you. You are such a pretty little cock-tease aren’t you? Well, I am going to show you what happens to little whores when they decide to play with real men.”
Jesus Crist. I had only taken a sip of the drugged drink. I didn’t know if I could act this helpless. Really, I thought to myself, what kind of girl wouldn’t knee him in the balls for even considering talking to them that way.
I decided to play this as an innocent girl who didn’t understand what was happening. “I don’t understand,” I stated in my falsely high-pitched voice.
He laughed quietly under his breath and said, “You will soon, little girl. Drink up.” When he turned his head to look over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching our interaction, I quickly poured the drink out below the bar using my fingers to keep the ice in the glass. I then brought the ice-filled glass to my lips and pretended to have downed the drink in a few gulps. I may have to allow this creep to kidnap me, but I was going to make sure I kept my head drug free in the process.
He turned back to me and smiled approvingly at the empty glass. What now? What did one say to their future kidnapper? I thought back to when I had been exposed to date-rape drugs before and remembered feeling heavy and confused. I let my arms fall to my sides as I swayed more dramatically to the music and let my eyes roam freely over the crowd in the club. I didn’t know why I even bothered trying to act the part because Mr. Prison Tattoos clearly thought that I was a done deal and didn’t bother paying attention to my behavior. He just grabbed my upper arm and led me through the throngs of people to a back door.
The moment we were out of the back door he swung me around until my face was pushed up against the brick of the building and he pressed his body into mine. I had trained for years to get out of situations just like this and I had to actively fight my muscle memory to remain docile in his grasp. He pushed my miniskirt up and grasped my hips as he ground his obvious erection against me. Cold sweat dripped down my spine and I tasted bile in the back of my throat. How much was I going to have endure?
If I turned and broke this guy’s neck for touching me, we would lose this chance to find where the cartel was keeping Grace and the other girls. But I doubted even the drugged innocent girl I was pretending to be would take this sort of treatment without some sort of protest. I needed to walk the line of acting like a victim without actually becoming one. That was something I swore I would never be again.
“No! Stop. Let me go!” I yelled in my high-pitched voice that echoed down the empty alley. The sound had the desired effect of making him stop what he was doing and step away from my back to look around and see if anyone heard me. But it also caused him to spin me around and backhand my right cheek with enough force that I felt the skin split. I let out a girly cry and took a couple of stumbling steps away from him. I figured that if I made enough noise, he would want to get me out of this semi-public place and take me to where the cartel was keeping the girls.
My assumption proved to be true and he grabbed my stumbling form and led me to the back of a normal-looking sedan. He used the keys to open the trunk and then shoved me inside. He slammed the trunk door down and I was enclosed in darkness. Moments later I heard the car start and then was thrown to the back of the small space as the car sped away. I stopped the whimpering girl routine and took three deep breaths. I wasn’t afraid of small spaces but riding in the trunk of a car while the driver took turns at breakneck speeds was not something I found enjoyable.
“If I break my neck because of this asshole’s bad driving, I am going to come back as a ghost and haunt your ass,” I murmured in a low voice to Liam on the other side of the listening device. Anything to keep me from remembering the feel of the creep’s hands on my bare hips and from imaging the things that were about to happen. Anything to keep my memories of similar hands on my young body locked tightly in the box that I had stuffed them into years ago.
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